Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) fingerprinting took a different approach to magnetic resonance (MR) than conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). NMR fingerprinting excited multiple resonant species at the same time based on the premise that different types of tissues would have different signal evolutions that could be generated and collected simultaneously. The term “resonant species”, as used herein, refers to an item (e.g., water, fat, tissue) that can be made to resonate using NMR. NMR fingerprinting did not define what the signal evolutions for resonant species had to be, rather preferring to capture the generated signals and match them to other known or modeled signals. Since different tissues have different signal evolutions, relaxation parameters were able to be determined by pattern matching the signal evolutions acquired over time to the known and/or simulated signal evolutions.